


Postscript

by Tierfal



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Banter, Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist (2003), Canon: Fullmetal Alchemist: Conqueror of Shamballa, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Reunions, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-03
Updated: 2013-09-03
Packaged: 2017-12-25 11:30:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed is here, and Roy is whole.</p><p>[Major spoilers for '03/CoS.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Postscript

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pax_et_Lux](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pax_et_Lux/gifts), [GoodbyeBlueMonday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GoodbyeBlueMonday/gifts), [Mere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mere/gifts).



> This is a completely unlicensed, unendorsed, unapproved epilogue to [Ink](http://www.livejournal.com/tools/memories.bml?user=rainjoyswriting&keyword=Ink&filter=all), written for Pax, Rose, and Mere. Because [plot bunnies](http://mustelric.tumblr.com/post/60015966833/memoriescantwait-replied-to-your-post-cos-royed). _Damn it_. XD
> 
> I read bits of Ink for details last night, but I haven't reread the whole thing in a while, so please forgive me if the characterizations aren't quite right. :x Jesus, this is a new standard of 'carried away' even for me. XD
> 
> IF YOU ENJOY IT, PLEASE SHOW YOUR SUPPORT BY NOT TELLING RAINJOYOUS THAT I'M A FILTHY THIEF. ♥

Roy spends half the night searching.

Ed is not in the center of Central, where the ground split, and the suits of armor shambled up the walls of the craters and spilled out with the unnatural light.

Ed is not in the city below, with its ruined towers and its rows of glassless windows like gaping mouths, with its blood-splattered black array and its stifling shroud of silence.

Ed is not at Headquarters.

Ed is not on the streets.

Roy moves quickly, smoothly, efficiently; he has to stay one step ahead of the whispers; if they catch him, he doesn’t know… He’s not prepared to fight them. Not now.

Ed isn’t here.

Ed might very well be dead—somewhere, anywhere; that world, this one, some nothing-ether-space between. And if he doesn’t get here, Roy will never even know.

_Equivalent exchange, Mustang—for your imbecilic hope. What have you ever done to deserve happiness?_

The pit behind the patch aches. It’s four in the morning, and he’s losing his mind.

…again.

One more sweep. One more check. He’ll take those thousand stairs again; it’s the least that he could do for Ed, for the Ed who tried to give him one last chance at everythi…

The silhouette that’s draped itself over that park bench makes his skin tingle. Roy hasn’t believed in coincidences in a long time.

He doesn’t really feel his feet moving; his heart seems to be ricocheting around his ribcage; a rather detached part of his brain thinks that’s probably cause for concern.

“Jeez,” Ed says, smiling—grinning— _beaming_ — “Took you long enough.”

“You might have called,” Roy says, or the gremlins that have taken control of his vocal cords in his mental absence make him say.

“No money,” Ed says. He’s pure mercury in moonlight. “Besides, I thought you oughta earn it. I did all the hard work, y’know.”

“I know,” Roy says.

Ed shifts, pauses, folds his arms, and grimaces his way through a wince.

“And, uh,” he says, in the way that passes for _delicate_ with Ed, “it… took… almost a liter of blood. But I’m fine! I’m cool, I’m great, just… a little lightheaded, is all.” He winks broadly. “And hey, that’s mostly you, right?”

Roy wants to wrap him up in both arms and roll their tangle of limbs into a duvet and bury the whole pile in a mountain of cotton and fleece. Can they just be soft and warm and safe forever? Is that too much to ask?

“Can you stand?” he asks, but he’s already bending, already reaching out—oh, _God_ , for real this time; eleven years of desperate dreams and miserable fantasies, and Ed is real beneath his fingertips, _real_ against his palm—

Ed seems to be marginally taller than he was when he leapt into the fray eleven years ago, half muted brown, half golden triumph—and his eyes are older; the lines aren’t laugh lines—but the way they crinkle—he won’t stop _smiling_ —

“Fuck you,” he says, fondly, and Roy’s heart squeezes so hard he thinks it will surely snap in half. “You look so serious.”

Ed fits perfectly in under Roy’s right shoulder, nestled in against his side; Ed’s warm left arm settles around his waist, fingers curling in his coat for a handhold. Ed’s hip presses into his; Ed’s flyaways tickle gently at his jaw. Ed smells like ozone and machine oil and coal smoke and iron and _life_.

Roy can barely breathe. Apparently this manifests as ‘looking serious’.

“You’re a fucking liar, too,” Ed says. “You’re way grayer than you said.” He reaches up with the silver fingers gleaming; touches them so carefully to the sometimes-quite-distressing fans of white spreading outward from Roy’s temples. “Lucky for you, I’m all grown-up and mature now, so I think older guys are sexy.”

“Lucky for me,” Roy says, and they’re not the three words they should be, but they’ll do. “Should I—you’ll need somewhere to stay; of course you’re welcome to my home, but if you’d rather a hote—”

“Don’t make me laugh, Roy,” Ed says, and the sound of his _name_ , his given name, the syllable of his identity, on _those_ lips—he can’t help himself; he has to lift a hand and lay his fingertips against Ed’s cheek. “Really don’t. I think the hysteria’s starting to set in, and if I start laughing, I probably won’t stop.”

“I’m dreaming,” Roy says.

“You’re a dumbass,” Ed says. “Where’d you leave the car?”

“It’s a quarter-mile or so, Edward,” Roy says—and in _that_ name, in the utterance of it, real sounds that resonate instead of needy, slanting, scrawled letters on a pale page—this is happening. He’d hardly dared to believe it even at the touch. This is happening; this is not another dream; this is not another feverish mirage the blizzard built to drive him to the edge. This is happening, and he fears that the cresting wave of anticipation and adulation and overpowering possibility will drown them both.

Thirteen _years_ , and the unthinkable is unfolding.

“I could carry you if you like,” Roy says.

Ed laughs—it sounds like Roy remembers, and not. “This is kinda like our fuckin’ honeymoon, right? No, I’m okay. I’m good. Just… can we take it a little slow?”

“Of course,” Roy says, and it’s strange to remember the tiny streak of gold and gumption blasting through the halls of Headquarters, constantly in motion, powering through on principle, running himself ragged to the tempo of the countdown clock inside his head. Ed was a pole star quavering on the brink of supernova then—too hot, too bright; frenetic, frantic, unsustainable—and some part of Roy always knew that he’d burn himself out of existence one day.

And Roy hates himself, hates both of them, hates the decade of absolutely histrionic longing, hates the way the moonlight strikes the swinging rope of Ed’s hair and the sharp edges of his grin. He’s fixed now. He’s stabler; he’s _sane_. He’s almost the age Roy was the first time they parted, and he’s settled into himself; he’s seen things, learned things, balanced his psyche, thrown parts of himself away. He’s an adult. He’s comfortable now, in his marred skin; he knows, to a hairsbreadth, the extent of his power. He’s no loose cannon now—he’s a polished rifle with a bayonet. He’s not dangerous anymore; he is _lethal_.

Roy is terrified as much as he’s exhilarated. It was hard enough not being destroyed by the abstraction. Ed in the _flesh_ could tear him to shreds, crush him to pulp, reduce him to _nothing_ —

And he’s just so tired of that pain.

“Prime Minister, huh?” Ed asks as they limp towards the car. “Pretty posh title you got there. Proper noun and shit.”

Their ribcages fit together like puzzle pieces. Roy will stitch together the last few scraps of courage to make himself the armor to endure this, because it’s _right_.

“It’s all very sophisticated,” Roy says. “Which is why you mustn’t believe Colonel Hawkeye when she inevitably alludes to the way I nearly wet myself on the council floor as the votes came in.”

Ed stares for a moment, as though he simply can’t believe it, before he starts to laugh.

“What’d I tell you about jokes, asshole?” he says. “Fuck _me_ ; you havin’ a sense of humor’s got to be a sign of the Apocalypse. We should make a bunker.”

“There’s a perfect place for one in the yard,” Roy says. “Tin-roofed, or subterranean? How many padlocks on the door, do you think?”

“You are an absolute _shit_ ,” Ed says, and his broad grin is so beautiful Roy’s whole body tightens at the sight. “You’re really losing it this time. First day back, and they’re gonna throw me in jail for turning the Prime Minister into a raving loony.”

“I’m giddy,” Roy says. “I’ve been up for several hours longer than I care to tally, aided by a genuinely impressive volume of coffee and a rather less-admirable quantity of whiskey.”

“Right,” Ed says, and approximates snapping with his automail fingers—which makes a bizarre pinging sound that would probably send Winry into instantaneous conniptions. “About that. I’m gonna mark the level of liquid in every bottle in the house, and if you take a sip without permission, shit’s gonna get ugly.”

“I don’t think I’ll need to,” Roy says. “Drinking is a crutch, Edward. One of many I took up to hobble past the space you left. With you here, they’re just habits. Habits can be broken.”

“So can your balls if you lie to me,” Ed says, quite cheerfully, in a way that sounds _far_ too much like Al.

“I can think of a dozen things I’d rather that you did to them,” Roy says.

Ed’s breath catches, but they’ve reached the car, so Roy swallows the lascivious smirk in favor of primly opening the passenger door.

“Hang on a second,” Ed says as he drops into the seat. “They let you drive with only one eye? You’ve got no depth perception; why—”

“There are _some_ perks to being Prime Minister,” Roy says, and shuts the door.

“We’re going to die,” Ed says the instant Roy sits down behind the wheel. “I crossed fucking universes just to perish in a fiery wreck of mangled steel with your crazy ass. I hope Al forgives me. I hope it’s quick. I hope you stop someplace quiet on the side of the road so we can get it on in the backseat before you crash and kill us both.”

“That would be very tacky,” Roy says, glancing into his side mirror before drawing out into the street. The mirror, predictably, displays the sort of desolate urban wasteland one expects at four in the morning on a weeknight in a pleasant part of town.

“So would hurling us into a ditch,” Ed says.

“I can do Flame Alchemy with one eye,” Roy says. “I am quite capable of driving familiar roads.”

“I still really think we should have sex within the first mile or two,” Ed says. “Just in case.”

“It’s not far, Edward.”

“Don’t you have flunkies to do this? Hey, where’s Havoc? Or—I mean, you _must_ have a chauffeur. Fuckin’ Prime Minister and all. You must have guys lining up outside the door begging to shine your shoes every morning. You must have _bodyguards_ ; where the hell are they?”

“I gave them the night off,” Roy says. “…forcefully.”

Ed folds his arms behind his head, arches his back, and grins. “Wanted me all to yourself?”

Roy looks over at him. “Precisely.”

Ed scrambles for a handhold on the door. “Watch the road!”

They don’t even come close to hitting the streetlamp, and they barely graze the curb; Roy doesn’t know what Ed’s so worried about.

In due time, without any injuries unless you count the apparent meteoric rise of Ed’s blood pressure, Roy has parked the car in front of his home.

Ed squints through the window, nose mere centimeters from the glass. “Is this a different house?” Is he… blushing? “I, uh—went past once. Just. Out of curiosity. Not like I was gonna knock and then drop my coat on your doorstep and sashay inside or anything. I wasn’t _that_ tipsy.”

“It’s the same house,” Roy says slowly. “But I actually maintain it now.”

“Hard to imagine you painting shutters,” Ed says.

“I found,” Roy says, killing the engine and getting out, “that it was more productive to bang nails into boards than it was to bang my head against the wall.”

“Well, guess what?” Ed asks, beaming again. “You can bang _me_ against a wall now.”

“Good heavens, Edward,” Roy says. “I have a perfectly good kitchen table, you know. And it’s _far_ easier to double its entertainment value by inviting senators over for dinner and sitting them down, then sharing meaningful glances until they start to sweat.”

Ed is definitely blushing now.

Roy goes to get the door for him and carefully helps him out.

“I think maybe we should, y’know, try every square inch of the place,” Ed says. “Just to be thorough. Scientific. We can have a rating system for afterwards.”

Roy is ever-so-slightly ashamed to admit that he’s greatly looking forward to the rugburns, the ropeburns, the bruises, the multitude of sorenesses, and the awkwardly inexplicable stains on items of furniture and sections of wall.

With Edward Elric leaning on him, arm wrapped around him, footsteps ringing on the cobblestone, eyes turned up towards his face—Roy’s looking forward to just about everything.

“Here,” he says once he’s bested the three deadbolt locks and the alchemic seal. “Leave your shoes—” It’s so damned domestic that he swears his heart stops for the umpteenth time. “—and I’ll draw you a bath.”

Ed wrinkles his nose. “Do I stink that much?” He grins again, slowly. “Or is this a pretty fuckin’ obvious ploy to see me naked?”

“The effrontery,” Roy says. “I’ll have you know that high-ranking politicians are _incapable_ of harboring ulterior motives.”

“I owe Al fifty fuckin’ francs,” Ed says. He’s bent to unlace his boots, and it is a medal-worthy testament to Roy Mustang’s willpower that the view does not compel him to jump this young man here and now. “I was talking shit about you in Calais, right, and he said that at least you had a sense of humor about shit, and I said that wasn’t possible.”

“I suppose I never gave you much reason to have faith in me,” Roy says, gripping the banister of the stairs a bit more tightly than perhaps is necessary.

“Sure you did,” Ed says as he straightens, and his hair whips back. “You were always giving me stuff I didn’t appreciate at the time.”

 _For instance,_ Roy thinks, _my undying affection._

“Let me start the bathwater,” he says. “Can you manage the stairs?”

“I just got an open invitation to leave a ring in your bathtub,” Ed says. “I’m gonna crawl if I have to.”

Roy’s hands shake as he turns the taps. He sits down on the tile and watches the water rise.

This isn’t going to last.

They’re going to fight. They’re going to snipe at each other. They’ll rip open the old wounds; they’ll cut some new ones; they’ll be spiteful; they’ll be cruel; they’ll resent each other, day by day. It’ll go stale. It’ll go cold. It’ll crumble. And where will they be then? Ed’s left everything, _everything_ behind for him—for what remains of him, for the scared, jagged fragments of an alcoholic married to his doomed idealism. They’re both hanging all of their hopes on half a chance.

It always starts out like this—so clever, so pretty, so _fun_. What happens when the luster wears away? It was one thing to worship him from a world apart; it was another to seduce him with promises, to ensnare him in curves and coils of ink—but now it’s _real_. How long until Roy fucks it up, and then they’re _worse_ than just alone?

He shouldn’t think about it. It’s not fair to make assumptions about the finale before they’ve even finished a scene, but… he’s a strategist. He has to brace himself for the downpour even when the skies are clear.

Ed’s uneven steps traipse up the stairs, pause in the hall, move lightly through the bedroom, and hesitate again in the doorway.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“As the newly-instated master of my liquor cabinet,” Roy says, “will you permit me a drink?”

“No fuckin’ way,” Ed says, crossing the tile towards him— _clink-pat_ , _clink-pat_. “I gave up Al. You can give up al _cohol_.”

Roy wraps his arms around his knees and sets his chin on them. His chest seems to have shrunk somewhat. “May I still send it cordial letters?”

Ed sits down beside him and leans his head on Roy’s shoulder. “Ha, ha. Look, I’ve—been there. I used cheap cognac as a panacea those first two years, okay? It was my painkiller and my sleeping pill and my whole—” He waves his hands. “—coping mechanism. I don’t know. But I know how I was, and how I felt, and how fucking dependent I got, and… I just… I guess it’s selfish, but I don’t want to go through that from the other side. I can’t sit here and watch you make mistakes I never should’ve made in the first place. I can’t risk—” He swallows and tilts his head down; his hair spills over Roy’s shoulder and slithers down his arm. “Can’t risk you treating me like I probably treated people. Just can’t.”

Roy reaches out to turn off the faucet, then buries his face in Ed’s hair. “It may be rough for a while.”

Ed’s thin smile is audible even from under all the draping hair. “Fine by me. I like it rough.”

If Roy makes it through tonight without experiencing a brain aneurysm, they will be off to a magnificent start.

He clears his throat. “Delightfu—”

Ed’s stomach growls like a passel of angry dragons.

Roy pauses. “Shall I make you something to eat?”

Ed grins. “I think I’m gonna keep you,” he says.

Roy thinks he may forgo food for now.

It soothes his shaken soul a bit to see Ed shoveling in a halfhearted attempt at spaghetti as though it’s the finest cuisine in Central. It does not hurt that Ed is bundled up into Roy’s best bathrobe and second-best slippers (no one remarked on the fact that Ed selected the slightly smaller pair), with wet hair trailing down his back and a freshly-scrubbed glow to his skin.

“Tomatoes are real fresh,” Ed says when he’s emptied the bowl and begun eyeing the pot on the stove.

Roy goes to get him another helping. “They’re from the backyard.”

Ed’s eyes are massive when he turns. “You _grow_ stuff?” He blinks several times. “ _You_ grow stuff?”

“I grow _stuff_ ,” Roy says.

“Stuff it,” Ed says. “This I gotta see.”

Roy raises the ladle. “Before seconds?”

Ed grabs his bowl in both hands and holds it out. “I’m not _crazy_ , Roy.”

Roy starts scooping. “To the best of my knowledge, the jury is still out on that.”

Naturally, Hurricane Elric doesn’t take long to distribute half of the sauce in the bowl down the front of Roy’s robe again, and then he’s seizing Roy’s wrist and dragging them both outside.

“I won’t believe you until I see the tomatoes,” he says. “You’re not the gardening type.”

Bursting back out into the moonlight, with the crisp night tempered by the perfume of the ambient flowerbeds, it’s easier to be brave. “I’ve been the _taking my mind off of you_ type for a long time, Ed.”

Ed adopts a puzzled look, tightens his grip on Roy’s wrist, and hauls him over towards the rosebushes. He plants Roy’s second-best slippers firmly in the dirt.

“There,” he says.

Roy looks at the roses. He looks at Ed. He looks at the roses again.

“I know you’ve been away for a while,” he says slowly, “and I _do_ hate to be the bearer of bad news, but these are definitely not tomatoes.”

“Of course not, you idiot,” Ed says. “They’re roses. Roses are fucking romantic.”

Over the duration of his life thus far, Roy has frequently found that, when a madperson is waving something in your face—be it a stack of photographs, a loaded revolver, or an automail hand—the best course of action is usually to agree with them.

“They are,” he says. “Notoriously.”

“ _Right_ ,” Ed says, as though they’ve reached some sort of long-awaited revelation. “And you are fucking sappier than that tree behind you, so this has got to be the most romantic place in all of fucking _Amestris_ as far as you’re concerned, so will you just fucking kiss me now?”

Roy stares at Ed.

Ed stares back.

Roy swallows.

“I thought you said that you wanted to take it slow,” he says.

Ed blinks. “When the fuck did I say that?”

“While we were walking to the car,” Roy says.

Ed looks at him as though he is an arguably-sentient begonia. “I meant _literally_.”

“I assumed you meant figuratively as well,” Roy says. “It’s not so much to ask, when this is so new, and we’re both…”

The begonia is most assuredly not sentient.

“You are a fucking maniac,” Ed says. “I can’t believe they let you out in public. I’m gonna track down every last person who voted for you and smack ’em up the side of the fucking head. With the _metal_ hand.”

Roy clears his throat. “As the newly-instated master of my entire life,” he says, “will you permit me to make it up to you?”

Ed’s grin spreads across his face like wildfire, and Roy is so very, very flammable.

“Do your fucking worst, Mustang,” Ed says.

Roy’s hands tremble a little as he runs his fingertips along the sharp line of Ed’s jaw. “How about if I do my _best_ , Edward?”

Ed’s fingers snake into Roy’s hair and curl tightly. He’s trapped. It’s wonderful.

“Tomato, tomahto,” Ed says.

Roy’s still kissing him when the sun comes up.


End file.
